The Illustrated Gormenghast Trilogy

Steerpike had, of course, made the drawings himself, spending several hours longer on them than he had intended, for once he had started he had become interested, and had the Doctor or his sister opened his door in the small hours of this same morning they would have found the high-shouldered boy bending over a table in his room, absorbed; the compasses, protractors and set square neatly placed in a row at the side of the table, the beautifully sharpened pencil travelling along the ruler with cold precision.

Now, as he unrolled the drawings before the wide eyes of the Aunts he handled them deftly, for it pleased him to take care of the fruits of his labours. His hands were clean, the fingers being curiously pointed, and the nails rather longer than is normal.

Cora and Clarice were at his side in an instant. There was no expression in their faces at all. All that could be found there was uncompromisingly anatomical. The thrones stared at the Aunts and the Aunts stared back at the thrones.

‘I have no doubt which one you will prefer, for it is unique in the history of golden thrones. Choose, your Ladyships – choose!’ said Steerpike.

Cora and Clarice pointed simultaneously at the biggest of the three drawings. It almost filled the page.

‘How right you are!’ said Steerpike. ‘How right you are! It was the only choice. I shall be seeing the goldsmith tomorrow and shall advise him of your selection.’

‘I want mine soon,’ said Clarice.

‘So do I,’ said Cora, ‘very soon.’

‘I thought I had explained to you,’ said Steerpike, taking them by their elbows and bringing them towards him – ‘I thought I had explained to you that a throne of hammered gold is not a thing which can be wrought overnight. This man is a craftsman, an artist. Do you want your glory ruined by a makeshift and ridiculous pair of bright yellow sit-upons? Do you want to be the laughing-stock of the Castle, all over again, because you were too impatient? Or are you anxious for Gertrude and the rest of them to stare, open-mouthed with jealousy, at you as you sit aloft like the two purple queens you undoubtedly are? … Everything must be of the best. You have entrusted me to raise you to the status that is your due and right. You must leave it to me. When the hour comes, we shall strike. In the meanwhile it is for us to make of these apartments something unknown to Gormenghast.’

‘Yes,’ said Cora. ‘That’s what I think. They must be wondrous. The rooms must be wondrous.’

‘Yes,’ said Clarice. ‘Because we are. The rooms must be just like us.’ Her mouth fell open, as though the lower jaw had died.

‘But we are the only ones who are worthy. No one must forget that, must they, Cora?’

‘No one,’ said Cora. ‘No one at all.’

‘Exactly,’ said Steerpike, ‘and your first duty will be to recondition the Room of Roots.’ He had glanced at them shrewdly. ‘The roots must be repainted. Even the smallest must be repainted, because there is no other room in Gormenghast that is so wonderful as to be full of roots. Your roots. The roots of your tree.’

To his surprise the twins were not listening to him. They were holding each other about their long barrel-like chests.

‘He made us do it,’ they were saying. ‘He made us burn dear Sepulchrave’s books. Dear Sepulchrave’s books.’

‘HALF-LIGHT’

Meanwhile, the Earl and Fuchsia were sitting together two hundred feet below and over a mile away from Steerpike and the Aunts. His lordship, with his back to a pine tree and his knees drawn up to his chin, was gazing at his daughter with a slithery smile upon his mouth that had once been so finely drawn. Covering his feet and heaped about his slender body on all sides was a cold, dark, undulating palliasse of pine needles, broken here and there with heavy, weary-headed ferns and grey fungi, their ashen surfaces exuding a winter sweat.

A kind of lambent darkness filled the dell. The roof was sky-proof, the branches interlacing so thickly that even the heaviest downpour was stayed from striking through; the methodical drip … drip … drip of the branch-captured rain only fell to the floor of needles several hours after the start of the heaviest storm. And yet a certain amount of reflected daylight filtered through into the clearing, mainly from the East, in which direction lay the shell of the library. Between the clearing and the path that ran in front of the ruin, the trees, although as thick, were not more than thirty to forty yards in depth.

‘How many shelves have you built for your father?’ said the Earl to his daughter with a ghastly smile.

‘Seven shelves, father,’ said Fuchsia. Her eyes were very wide and her hands trembled as they hung at her sides.

‘Three more shelves, my daughter – three more shelves, and then we will put the volumes back.’

‘Yes, father.’

Fuchsia, picking up a short branch, scored across the needled ground three long lines, adding them to the seven which already lay between her father and herself.

‘That’s it, that’s it,’ came the melancholy voice. ‘Now we have space for the Sonian Poets. Have you the books ready – little daughter?’

Fuchsia swung her head up, and her eyes fastened upon her father. He had never spoken to her in that way – she had never before heard that tone of love in his voice. Chilled by the horror of his growing madness, she had yet been filled with a compassion she had never known, but now there was more than compassion within her, there was released, of a sudden, a warm jet of love for the huddled figure whose long pale hand rested upon his knees, whose voice sounded so quiet and so thoughtful. ‘Yes, father, I’ve got the books ready,’ she replied; ‘do you want me to put them on the shelves?’

She turned to a heap of pine cones which had been gathered.

‘Yes, I am ready,’ he replied after a pause that was filled with the silence of the wood. ‘But one by one. One by one. We shall stock three shelves tonight. Three of my long, rare shelves.’

‘Yes, father.’

The silence of the high pines drugged the air.